Here’s an interactive way to support the hospitality community: head to Recipes for Relief at www.relief.recipes where you can buy guided video tutorials with well-known chefs and mixologists. The site is powered by Meez, an app and recipe tool for professional chefs, slated to launch just as Covid-19 hit. Opting to postpone this public launch, Meez leveraged its existing technology to create an online marketplace for recipes where chefs and cocktail-pros can share their expertise and engage with their guests while they receive 100 percent of the proceeds from your purchases.
While more participating chefs and mixologists are being tied to the project, you’ll presently find 25 of them on the site, all offering some of their favorite recipes. Among them Victoria Blamey, a Santiago, Chile native, and, until recently, the executive chef of New York City’s famed Gotham Bar & Grill. Blamey will teach you how to create a puff pastry vegetable pithivier filled with seasonal ramps, kale, ricotta and guanciale, and, if you’re craving some Indian flavors, she’ll show you how to cook dhaal by simmering red lentils, fried onion and a smattering of spices in coconut milk.
We suggest you check out Louise Bannon, an extraordinary, Irish baker whose long, international career took her from Ballymaloe House in southern Ireland to Noma in Copenhagen, to stages at the San Francisco Baking Institute and Tartine in that same city, and to The Real Food Fight in southern France before she opened Tír Bakery in Denmark where she makes artisanal pastries and breads with ancient grains. You know you want to try her rhubarb and almond tart, dressed with cream and seasonal fruits or berries.
If you like to dabble with drinks, tune in to Pete Vasconcellos, bar director at the Penrose in New York City. Vasconcellos offers an array of unique cocktail recipes, both his own tipples and creative interpretations of traditional quaffs. His low ABV Summer Negroni is a slightly spritzy concoction with Vermouth, Campari, lemon, honey, pepper tincture, soda, and basil, while his Division Bell gives this modern classic a boost with pineapple-infused mezcal, Aperol, Maraschino and lime.
